Erika Linke, who served as president of the Association of College and Research Libraries, said Google's agreement to remove non-English works from its scanning project could stifle enthusiasm among college librarians anxiously waiting for the program to launch.
"It changes the value of it in a way," said Linke, associate dean of libraries at Carnegie Mellon University. "It makes a big difference" for students researching non-English texts, she said.
Brandon Butler, a law and policy fellow at the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), said Google's compromise will slash the volume of texts librarians anticipated as they observed the mega-site's protracted legal fight.
"It'll be a pretty Anglo-centric system," Butler said. "What we thought we would have access to [on Google Book Search] was cut in half. It will make it significantly less attractive, because it's much less comprehensive."
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